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    Convenience
    Convenience
    Convenience
    Ebook147 pages1 hour

    Convenience

    By Rob Scott

    ()

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    About this ebook

    This speculative fiction novella explores economic challenges and daily life in rural Segno, a small town in East Texas, through the story of Sarah Parker. Living in the pine woods with her husband Jack, Sarah identifies an opportunity to generate income by preparing and selling meals using expiring food from local stores. As Sarah's business expands, she navigates the complexities of rural economics, balancing profitability, scalability, and sustainability. The story delves into the intricacies of living in an underserved community, exploring themes of self-sufficiency, entrepreneurship, and the socioeconomic factors that shape rural life. As Sarah navigates the logistical and financial challenges of living far from urban conveniences, the novella examines the economic disparities between rural and urban areas. It highlights the impact of infrastructure, market access, and government policy on everyday life. Sarah’s journey serves as a microcosm for broader discussions about economic mobility, the value of labor, and the pursuit of a sustainable lifestyle in the face of systemic challenges.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu.com
    Release dateOct 23, 2024
    ISBN9781300911692
    Convenience
    Author

    Rob Scott

    Rob Scott has worked as a photojournalist and editorial photographer for 30 years. His portraits of celebrities such as BB King, Sir David Attenborough, Sir Simon Rattle, David Beckham and Sir Richard Branson have been published all over the world and his work regularly appears in UK magazines including the BBC's Countryfile, Music and Wildlife, as well as LandScape, National Trust and English Heritage magazines. In recent years he has specialised in documenting Britain's surviving traditional industries. www.robscottphotography.com

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      Book preview

      Convenience - Rob Scott

      Chapter 1: What are you doing out there?

      Convenience is the state of being able to proceed with something with little effort or difficulty.  Affordable provisions; food, beverage, prepared meals and snacks are abundant in urban settings and lacking among rural America.  In America, a convenience store is the epitome of convenience when it comes to acquiring provisions.  Affordable is a relative term, it entails a reasonable price, meaning you have enough money to buy it.  Grocery stores markup packages of food 25%, restaurants markup prepared meals 30%, but convenience stores markup items 125%.  If you need a $3 bottle of creamer, and the convenience store is two miles away at $6.75 and the grocery store is twenty-five miles away at $3.75, is it really more expensive to purchase from the C-store?  Fifty miles round-trip in a pickup truck travelling at twelve miles to the gallon at $3.65 per gallon gas prices, the round-trip costs $15.20 regardless of how many items are purchased.  So, the $6.75 bottle of creamer is more affordable than the $18.96 bottle of creamer from the far away grocery store.  The choice of C-store purchase versus the grocery store purchase is the very definition of convenience.

      If on a Wednesday, Sally decides to go shopping for provisions, and travels into town to purchase $100 of groceries, it really costs her $116 with the gas expense, that is a built-in 16% margin of cost that she may or may not understand is accruing to her trip for provisions.  If Sally works remotely and she wants to replenish the creamer on her fifteen-minute break, she can’t do that by taking a trip to the grocery store, there is not enough time to do so, but she can if she visits the C-store.  On a gas-time continuum basis, the difference is two hours of time plus gasoline expense.  If she makes a typical remote salary of $35.00 per hour the cost to make a trip to the grocery store is really $90.00.  If Sally purchases less than $100.00 at the C-store, then Sally is actually saving money on her purchase versus the grocery store trip.  In fact, Sally would need to purchase over $400.00 of provisions from her trip to town to visit the grocery store to make the trip and its provisional purchases less expensive than from the convenience store.

      Infrastructure is extremely valuable.  Where paved roads exist, power lines, a source of water, and commerce is present, the value of property is relatively high.  Where these critical pieces of infrastructure are lacking, property value is low.  If you are making an investment, always buy low and watch it appreciate higher.  North Polk County property costs $50,000 per acre, south Polk County property costs $5,000 per acre.  But if infrastructure were to show up in southern Polk County, the property value would increase in parity.  In order to increase property value, the County has to improve the roads and provide infrastructure.  And entrepreneurs need to make prudent investments to capitalize upon opportunities to profit.  It is not just raw land that improves in value, but values of everything measured in square feet increases exponentially.

      North Polk County has 37,000 residents living among 18,500 houses across 127 square miles with an average home value of $160 per square foot times 1,500 square feet or $4.4 billion in home value.  829 businesses exist in north Polk County, employing 9,000 employees with an economic impact of $106 billion, the value of the companies in north Polk County, TX.

      South Polk County has 13,200 residents living among 6,500 houses across 930 square miles with an average home value of $103 per square foot times 1,350 square feet or $900 million in home value. Less than twelve businesses exist in south Polk County, employing 115 employees with an economic impact of zilch.

      Living in a rural setting such as in south Polk County is not convenient.  According to the US Census Bureau, 46 million Americans or 14% of the population live in rural areas across the country.  Rural populations are generally older with a higher population of residents aged 65 and older compared to urban areas.

      Chapter 2: Home Economics

      The average household in south Polk County, Texas has two residents per housing unit.  Depending upon the ability of the homemaker to cook meals, it is almost always less expensive for a couple to visit a restaurant than to cook for themselves.  Restaurants buy in volume and only tend to markup thirty percent.  Purchases at a grocery store are made at twenty-five percent markup.  But when time and ability are factored into the equation, it is very hard to beat restaurant math. 

      At $15 per plate, a couple will receive drink, bread or tortilla chips, a meal and perhaps the ability to split a dessert.  If the homemaker were to spend an hour preparing the meal, then consuming the meal and afterwards cleaning up, a total of two hours  expensed.at $35 per hour plus $12 for the food items from the grocery store equals $82. The breakeven occurs at five meals where the restaurant will cost $98 after tax and tip. The homemade meals will cost $100.   These economics would hold true except for the fact that south Polk County does not have any restaurants.

      North Polk County has 72 restaurants. Food is prepared fresh, hot and cheapest among them daily, nearly 22,000 meals a day, consumed among the entirety of all of Polk County residents, all 50,123 of them.  If restaurants were to appear in south Polk County, there would be a reasonable expectation that 9,000 meals could be demanded, perhaps more, given convenience and demand for that convenience.  But, they do not exist, and so, if home-made meals were to become stocked in the convenience store, then sales could be expected of them.

      Now, if the homemaker were to make six additional meals and six additional desserts for packaging and stocking at the local convenience store for sale, the 24 items divided into $100 equals $4.16 each item.  If she were to deliver them to the local C-store cooler and they sell for $6 each then she receives $52,560 less cost of $36,500 for the food gives her a net profit of $16,060; about $8 per hour.

      It is completely possible that the homemaker could obtain the day’s allotment of food at a deep discount, thereby reducing input from $100 to closer to $16 or the price of the gasoline used to collect the food each day.  If the homemaker were resourceful enough to cook whatever was cheapest that day, then the pricing of $6 per unit would warrant net profits of $46,720; about $23.36 per hour. 

      Deep discounts on a day’s allotment of food are available from many sources; Food distributors run close on expiration dates and will deeply discount cases of foods to bulk buyers; Grocery stores will do the same or they may throw out the food all together.  If the homemaker is resourceful, she could make the rounds to the food distributors and grocery store docks and gather heavily discounted daily allotment of food and cook that up daily.

      Generally, free food comes in large quantities, like by the twenty-five-pound case; chicken, pork, beef and fish are traditional staples of protein that all have an expiration date on the case.  If the homemaker were to secure a few cases a day of anything, then cooking that up would be a volume exercise and the output would be closer to 40 meals per case and if repeated for three meal-times and a dessert for a total output of 160 units instead of just 24 units.  At a cost of $16 to collect the free inputs, selling at $6 each item produces $960 per day or $120 per hour. 

      On a trip by the back of Brookshire Brothers grocery store early on a Tuesday morning, Sarah saw that there were cases of groceries that looked to be stacked for the Food Bank retrieval whenever they got around to it.  In the meantime, Sarah noticed a case of potatoes, a case of green beans, a case of squash and as she was placing them into the pickup truck, an employee asked her What are you doing?

      Sarah replied, Putting these to good use.  I am cooking 120 meals for my community today and I need these.  They are out for the taking, right?

      What else do you need today?

      "Well, I could use

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